Nowhere Boy
Review
by Anthony Morris
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Nowhere Boy
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There
are usually two ways to tell the story of a famous person : either try
to cram their entire life onto the screen, or focus on one small
occasion and claim it is representative of the whole.
But Nowhere Boy
tries a third path: it is about John Lennon, but it's about Lennon when
he was a teenager in the years leading up to the formation of The
Beatles. So there is a fair number of moments that you can't help but
feel are a bit clunky (look, he's getting his first guitar! Now he's
meeting Paul McCarthy!) because they reach outside the film for their
impact.
If you don't know the bare bones of the story, these
moments just don't mean much. But by focusing on his complicated family
life - he was given away by his flighty mum, who lived close by while
her sister raised him - this does manage to occasionally go beyond the
usual biopic cliches.
It's not really enough to make this work
as a film that can stand on it's own outside the Lennon story though :
if you weren't interested in John Lennon, there's not much here for
you. But it does a solid job of re-creating the era and the lead is a
good teen Lennon.
So if you're interested in Lennon (but have
never actually bothered to find out anything about his pre-Beatles
life, because this does take some liberties with his relationship with
his real mother), this is as good a place as any to start.
2.5
out
of 5
Nowhere Boy
Australian release: 26th December,
2009
Official
Site: Nowhere Boy
Cast: Aaron Johnson, Thomas Sangster, Kristin Scott Thomas
Director: Sam Taylor Wood
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